Pacific Plaza Property Hold-Outs Include Some of Dallas’s Most Famous Last Names

Thursday morning, in the comments to Belo Garden item, one Friend of Unfair Park asked for updates concerning yet another piece of the downtown-parks puzzle: Pacific Plaza, about which Megan wrote last month, when the Park and Recreation Department’s Planning and Design Committee OK’d acquiring — for $2.5 million or “the laws of eminent domain,” if need be — the rest of the land needed for the $9-million project that’ll replace a parking lot. As it turns out, the council will OK Park and Rec’s OK on Wednesday.

Agenda Item No. 17 offers all the details concerning the deal to acquire the final 26,322 square feet needed near Live Oak and St. Paul Streets, including the names of the folks and the trusts who’ll divvy up the dough — several of whom bear the last names “Cockrell” and “Dealey,” including the late Mary Alice Cockrell Dealey. Last month, Michael Hellman, the Park and Rec’s manager of park planning and acquisitions, told Unfair Park this was “the most difficult acquisition so far” due to the land being owned by a trust with 18 different owners.